I tried these services on BloggerStop.Net, in 3 phases:
- Kontera alone
- Kontera + Infolinks together (Although Kontera doesn't allow you to run another in-text ad service simultaneously ;)
- Infolinks alone
According to my experience I found Infolinks way better than Kontera. Although Kontera is a well established advertising network but it fails to impress the bloggers at an important criteria - revenue sharing.
While selecting an advertising service, you must compare the eCPM values from different advertisers. eCPM in simple terms is the revenue being given to the publishers per 1000 ad-clicks. And so it is the basic criteria of selection of an advertising program.
And the difference in the eCPM values between Kontera and Infolinks is not by a few cents but you will be amazed to know that they are differed by 10-20 times. Now that means, to earn any particular amount (say $50), if it requires 30 days through Infolinks, then it will approximately require 300-600 days (1-2 years) through Kontera...
The 10-20 times difference has been observed by me, if you read reviews across different blogs and forums, different bloggers have reported that Infolinks has 4-5 times to 20-40 times better eCPM than Kontera.

Now one problem that I have been facing in Infolinks, is that the ads are highly irrelevant to the linked text. The problem is due to lack of advertisers in the network. I think with increasing popularity this may be easily solved, already the traffic details from Alexa, shows a rapid increase in Infolinks as compared to Kontera:Statistics from Alexa for InfolinksStatistics from Alexa for Kontera

Update: Infolinks has clearly overtaken Kontera as per the statistics from Alexa, see the screenshot below

One more problem that I have found in both of them, is that the ads are opened in the same window, which actually takes away our visitors, so i will be writing to them regarding this issue, and it would be a great help for me if you do the same too.

Bottom line: Out of Kontera and Infolinks, I would advice you to join Infolinks to earn better.

Other than these two, there's another advertising agency - VibrantMedia, but it's first qualification requirement says:

Personally I hate any type of advertising that adds javascript over lays to my text. It's misleading to visitors at least and annoying to the point of throwing a computer out the window at most. Also, it slows down pages...a lot.

I've tried both companies, but just can't justify doing that to my visitors and blog readers.

JavaScript is present whether you use in-text or banner ads(including Google adsense)...

Moreover, although in case of intext ads, only links are appeared, but in case of banner ads etc. sometimes u see text, sometimes images and sometimes even videos and flash :-oImagine how much slow these will make your pages.

Moreover as a publisher, I know that clicks on these banner ads are really really less, but as in case of in-text ads clicks are many more. Ofcourse as I have mentioned too, the ads should not open in the same page, let's see if they change it soon....

The tweak you have explained is to modify the underlining from 2 lines to 1 line, but my advice do not tweak it yourself in the javascript file, as it may be against their T&C, as they already allow you to make this change through their advance integration method, so do it that way...

Anyways, I know that this method increases the chances of clicks, but I do not personally like this method as according to me, their should be some diff b/w the sponsored links and original-html links !

With few thousand clicks a month from adsense I get less than Infolinks which makes me say go to Infolinks. I have both on same site, they're working fine - I had no issues so far.I found another problem with adsense, revenue, cpm, ect are numbers that will be chnaged form one day to another. Say you make $12 for may 15, 2009 - if you check the status on May 25, revenue earned for may 15 went down to $4.50. It does not make any sense to me... not to mention google anaylitics which shows different reports for same site, same dates.Go figure.

@ Love*IndiaYup that's true, but you know... "Andho me kaana raja"...as long as it is paying more than other services (although with a declining performance), then we don't have any choice...In my case, clicks are of course even now are much better than banner ads, but payout is as you said around $.01-.03 (and I have confirmed this from others too, thru forums)

Hi guys, nice discussions here. Does anyone see big round video buttons when you point your cursor at your Infolinks on Opera 10 browser? If you point at the video button "please click to download and activate plugin" text also appears. It does not happen in firefox.

I've stayed far from both infolinks and Kontera! I've had bad experiences with them, getting loads of clicks on what I assume are high paying keywords but barely get anything for them. I stick with Adsense all the way, I remember Kontera telling me that if I earned less than $50 in one month then it is not counted. Unless you get bomb loads of traffic I don't recommend either! :D

Even I do not recommend kontera, but I'm sure it does carry on the unpaid amount to next month.Although adsense gives you dynamic ads, but still in my experience I have seen much more clicks on my in-text ads as compared to adsense banners...

Yeah Sandeep that's true, in fact recently infolinks is going even worse. Although similar new start ups are there, but none of them is able to stand the test of time...so we have to wait for a really good one...till then we have to use Infolinks.

Yeah I have already requested them. At that time, once an ad was clicked, it wasn't even possible to return to the blog, as "BACK" button used to go functionless. At least now that is functioning. When I asked them about opening ads in new pages, they answered me that don't consider these clicks as loss of traffic, it is simply conversion of traffic in to money. But of course we all know that it is all ridiculous. They are getting the benefits of the misery tactics of Kontera :)

I am so pissed off from Kontera that at one point of time I was thinking of becoming an advertiser with them (it's so cheap lol).

Also I don't even trust the number of clicks they are showing, because I analysed my site using Google Analytics inpage technology, which showed me that on an articles which received a total of 10000 page-views and close to 4600 UV more than 26% went to a kontera link, then how can this figure of 160 be true?

This is Jonathan from Kontera. I know this is an old post but I'd like to update you on what's currently going on at Kontera.

First of all, speaking to the issue of our ads opening in the same window, Kontera actually does offer a way for your Kontera In-Text ads to open in a new window. You can find out how to do that here: http://kb.kontera.com/questions/94/How+can+I+enable+ads+to+open+in+a+new+window%3F

Regarding Alexa, I honestly have no idea what the current Alexa data is, but either way how many hits an ad network's website gets is actually a very small indicator to the success of a network. That's not really telling you how they're finding the site, if it's organically or through paid ads, if the visitor is an employee, publishers, or advertisers; or of what size.

A more helpful indicator to finding out how success an ad network is by measuring their reach across the web. Kontera is displayed on more than 3 Billion page views each month, and has over 140 million unique users per month, with a network of over 15,000 quality publishers.

We feature an exclusive ad inventory from some of the biggest advertisers in the world including Microsoft, L'Oreal, National Geographic, Chevy, Samsung, NBC Universal Pizza Hut, HP, General Mills, and more. These premium, often Rich-Media ads are the most attractive to site visitors, offer the best possible CPC, and can only be found on the Kontera network.

Additionally, for as many of these ads that we had back in 2009, we have an exponential amount of them in 2011, meaning if you haven't tried Kontera in a while, the timing has never been better to try testing us again.

Regarding Ayush's question, depending on the content you have, it's possible that Kontera ads aren't displaying on all your webpages.

Kontera ads as Divya notes, are far more relevant that our competition. This is because of our Synapse Platform, an algorithm that rather than just scanning for keywords like other network, reads your webpages for actual meaning. This extra level of understanding is how we find the most relevant ads for your content, leading to higher CTR and better CPC. While we have a much larger ad inventory, another big reason our ads are more relevant is because of our contextual technology.

Because we put such a high premium on relevancy, we'd rather show no ad at all, as opposed to showing an irrelevant ad, which would explain why the amount of page views your seeing on Google Analytics doesn't match up to your impressions from Kontera.

Similarly because our ads are geo-targeted, it's possible that we don't have the right ads campaigns for your specific content, running for the areas of India where your readers are seeing them. If that's the case it's possible that your not receiving the high CPC ads I was talking about.

It's impossible to know for sure without looking at your account, but if you'd like to e-mail me I'd be happy to look into it.

1. That's great you are now offering the option to open ads in new windows.

2. I agree that you cannot compare Alexa rank of two websites from two different niches, but as infolinks and Kontera are from the same the niche, attracting almost similar traffic, so of course the traffic stats are more or less accurate.

3. Although Infolinks ads have improved over time, wrt relevance to the text, but of course your ads are even now better than them.

4. May be some advertisers like to target their ads geographically, but then of course you have to lose those publishers who are not happy with this.Your eCPM is still lower than that of Infolinks and therefore it still ranks higher among most of the publishers.If you can give a range of your eCPM, irrespective of the geo- etc. conditions, then I think you may get new members.

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